Chinese Officials to Get Press-Relations Training

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Published: May 10, 2005

CORRECTION APPENDED

Several people attending a reunion of Nieman Foundation journalism fellows at Harvard over the weekend said they were surprised to learn that the prestigious program had agreed to conduct a training session for Chinese officials on how to deal with the media during the 2008 Olympics, to be held in Beijing.

About 40 Chinese officials are to visit Harvard at the end of June for a weeklong training session. Bob Giles, curator of the Nieman Foundation, said he was helping plan a program on topics including the First Amendment, how a free press operates and what the Chinese can expect that journalists will want to know.

He said Chinese officials had approached the Fairbanks Center for East Asian Research at Harvard some months ago and ''asked for help in understanding the workings of the American press in anticipation of the Olympics and would Nieman be interested, and I said yes.''

Nieman alumni said they were not aware of the program's involvement until Sunday, when Howard Berkes, a correspondent for National Public Radio who has covered five Olympics, said in a public session that he had heard a rumor about it. Mr. Giles confirmed the rumor, causing a stir among the roughly 75 alumni there.

''The reaction was visceral right off the bat,'' Mr. Berkes said yesterday. He said he objected to lending the program's good name to a repressive government to teach tactics that could be used to thwart reporters. ''The major interest of the Chinese will be to limit damaging news coverage,'' he said.

Eugene Carlson, a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, said the concern was as much with educating Chinese officials ''about how to duck questions'' as it was with Mr. Giles's decision to involve the foundation.

Mr. Giles, who has been under fire by Nieman alumni for expanding the program beyond its core mission of giving midcareer journalists a chance to recharge their batteries, defended his decision. ''I believe in engagement,'' he said yesterday. ''It's not about press management or shaping your message, it's about understanding what our values are and how the press works.''

As for not alerting others, Mr. Giles said the training session was listed on the Nieman Web site, although not prominently, and he said the site was being redesigned. He also said that the Chinese were paying for the sessions and that the Nieman Foundation would be reimbursed by the Fairbanks Center for meals and employee time.

Alex Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, has also been involved in planning the sessions. ''China has a controlled media environment, but it is fluid and has the potential for change,'' Mr. Jones said. ''We would be remiss not to try to take advantage of that.''

Correction: May 11, 2005, Wednesday
Because of an editing error, an article in Business Day yesterday about press-relations training for Chinese officials at the Beijing Olympic Games, being offered at Harvard by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, referred incorrectly to Eugene Carlson, a Nieman fellow who commented. Though Mr. Carlson was a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal for 13 years, he is no longer employed there.